Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2015 - Page 17

A
Annual Convention of
Property Investment Prospects
2015
5th November 2015, Hämeenlinna, Finland
Registration fee
1 350 € (+VAT)
Early bird discount -20%
until 12th June
Come and join the meeting
point for decision makers
in the real estate industry
in Finland.
Register at
www.propertyinvest.ﬁ
REAL ESTATE EDUCATION
“The City of Outokumpu sought for
outside ideas and the concept for Treasure
Town was invented,” Mujunen explains. The
key idea was to create an attractive travel
destination for the whole family, using the
appeal of the old mine as a way to reach
people.
“There are plenty of great places in
Finland, but this type of a mining environment can not be found anywhere else.” The
City of Outokumpu has invested four million euros in the “underground renaissance”
and expectations are high for the future success of Treasure Town.
Going Underground
But what does all this mean practice? Well,
for instance, the old mine features various
locations where metals where processed –
and this space was completely transformed
for the purposes of events such as theatrical
plays and musical concerts. Tourists seem
to have heard the call of the old mine rather
well: during the summer 2014, the number
of visitors doubled from the previous year,
coinciding with the launch of the new Children’s Mine.
Also more and more companies are
making their nests at the mine. To push the
momentum even further, the local players
created the Mine Game which was distributed to Finnish schools for educational purposes.
“The operations around the mine can
be characterised as highly active and the area
is being constantly developed by the City
of Outokumpu,” says Anne Mujunen. She
expects that in the future, more investors
and operators will arrive to the neighbourhood, since the infrastructure is now in place
to achieve great things.
Data Loves Finland?
Other “treasures” are presently being uncovered all around Finland. As the old adage
states: “Information is power,” many players
have seized the opportunity to make money
out of data. According to experts, Finland
is probably the data-friendliest country in
Europe at the moment.
And why is this, you may ask? Start
with the node-point connectivity between
West and East, add super-reliable power grid
and infrastructure… and throw in a gamechanging IT sector and attractive support
packages. Even the “refreshing” climate is an
asset, since servers crave cool conditions. The
talk of the industry is “free cooling” which
means that the ambient environment (rather
than refrigerators) is used to cool the servers.
The question that many data companies are asking themselves is this: why
pay for a cooling system ten months of the
year, when you can pay for just one month?
Obviously, what you have here is a “data
heaven” that made an impression on Wall
Street Journal, even.
From Paper to Bytes
It all started five years ago when Google
established a data centre in Hamina, Finland.
After analysing numerous potential sites
around Finland, Google set up shop in
the old Summa paper mill, located on the
Southern coast of Finland. Formerly owned
by paper giant Stora Enso, the old plant fit
Google’s plans well – for instance, the date
centre could use sea water to cool down its
systems.
Google liked being in the neighbourhood so much that in 2013 the company
announced an additional, EUR 450 million
investment to expand its operations. The
expansion represents the single biggest foreign investment in the history of Finland –
and there are more similar cases on the way.
Microsoft just launched a rather secretive
data centre in the Uusimaa Region and the
Russian search engine company Yandex is
busy building its own centre in Mäntsälä.
Nordicum 15